Information Validation Quotes

Instead of assuming everything you're being told is the truth, ask plenty of questions.

When we hear news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

I want to set up a new standard: ‘scientific journalism.’ If you publish a paper on DNA, you are required, by all the good biological journals, to submit the data that has informed your research—the idea being that people will replicate it, check it, verify it. So this is something that needs to be done for journalism as well. There is an immediate power imbalance, in that readers are unable to verify what they are being told, and that leads to abuse.

There's no question that sources sometimes have interests aside from the truth when they talk to reporters. That's why reporters have to very aggressively report against their own theses and against their initial information.

As I understand it, Lacey has dismissed all of the fact checkers.

You shouldn't use anything as the sole source for anything, in my view.

I'd like to get to a state where people think that if you've Googled something, you've researched it, and otherwise haven't, and that's it.

If a journalist comes to you with a great story, one of the first questions you ask is how did you get it. How you got it is relevant to judging its accuracy and preparing yourself for any legal challenge.

You check off stories to make sure if they're true or if they're right.

I've learned the hard way at the national level that any erroneous statement will very quickly be magnified. So, as someone who talks for a living, I've learned to check, double-check and triple-check my sources.

It is often very illuminating...to ask yourself how you got at the facts on which you base your opinion. Who actually saw, heard, felt, counted, named the thing, about which you have an opinion?

If I see something dubious, say on a blog or a Web site, and I don't see it anywhere else, I'll just go right to the source and check it out.

I have a rule in research: The third time you hear something, it's generally true.

A judicious man looks at Statistics, not to "get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted 'on him".

Just because something is typed-whether it is typed on a business card or typed in a newspaper or book-this does not mean that it is true.

I deal with first-hand sources. And give the people, even John Sununu, the opportunity to respond to what I've been told by first-hand sources.

If you have an anecdote from one source, you file it away. If you hear it again, it may be true. Then the more times you hear it the less likely it is to be true.

If something comes on the radio or in print, I don't think there are any facts to it at all until someone shows some proof.

Writing keeps me from believing everything I read.

Whenever I want to know how to cook something, I can't ask one chef - I have to ask six.

Knowing the identity of the leaker helps you analyze the likelihood that the material is real.